


Adventures in Subspace

by cerisedeterre



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Blindfolds, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dom/sub Play, Established Relationship, F/F, Light Dom/sub, Math Kink, Outer Space, Physics, Thumb-sucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:40:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28614501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerisedeterre/pseuds/cerisedeterre
Summary: Adora dropped to the soft floor, laying on her back again, rolling her camisole up. “I have… I have too much free,” she mumbled happily.“We’ll see about that,” said Catra.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Entrapta/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Adventures in Subspace

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place just after season 5, episode 6, "Taking Control." Our heroes, in space, are on their way back to Etheria.

The ship—Darla, as Entrapta insisted on calling it—spun slowly away from the asteroids as its six passengers gathered, finally seated together along the soft floor of the ship’s common area, to finish their snack. Entrapta chewed, smiling, the last of her individual dumpling. Of course she had cut the dumpling into tiny segments before she could take a bite. Of course. 

From the top right pocket of her overalls she pulled her electronic laser pocketknife, useless in a fight but handy for close-in work and for what Entrapta called “food engineering.” (Glimmer liked to remind her that it’s also “cooking.”) She genuinely enjoyed chewing.

“I did not actually put any inappropriate biological fluid into these delicious dumplings, nor did I use machine oil. Only the fine Etherean sesame oil the ship’s provisions made available,” said Wrong Hordak, with that adorable stiffness Entrapta already enjoyed.

Adora moved closer to Catra, still seated, both of them smiling. If Adora was tired, she didn’t show it. If she knew whether she was happier from Catra’s recovery, or from She-Ra’s return, she wasn’t saying. 

The fierce cat-girl, erstwhile champion of the Horde, relaxed in the space beside Glimmer, contemplating the steam from the dumpling she held, then biting into it as if she had run it to ground. “Who’s a cute predator,” Bow said to Catra. “Who’s a lovely good predator.”

“Shut up,” Catra growled, not unkindly. Was this the good kind of teasing, she wondered? The one she was always trying to give Adora? 

“A good predator,” Wrong Hordak intoned, “might be defined as one who rarely lets prey go free, or, alternatively, as an efficient—”

“Biological processor of animal protein, regardless of the rate at which she allows her prey to escape!” Entrapta completed Wrong Hordak’s thought with enthusiasm. “Now can we talk about Avogadro’s number?”

“Avocado slumber?” asked Glimmer, flipping her pink hair back over one ear. “Might be more Perfuma’s thing, but go ahead.”

“No—oh.” There was a thud on the ceiling, and then another. Entrapta’s bunches of hair stood up all at once, and her eyes opened wide. Then Entrapta rose to her feet. “I’m going to need some time with Darla. Excuse me.” And she strode purposefully off to the control panel for the First Ones tech that guided the ship. “That’s a—”

And the floor tilted: Catra almost tried to dig her claws into the unyielding metallic floor before letting herself slide along with Glimmer and Bow, while Adora stood.

*

“What’s up?” Adora asked.

“Up,” Wrong Hordak began, “has a more complicated meaning in space and away from a planetary gravitational field. In this case it refers to the direction in which—”

“I believe it’s an idiom.” Entrapta spoke rapidly, exaggerating her sometimes singsong delivery: it sounded, to Adora, like “iodine.” Or maybe “I, a dom?”

“What’s happening?” Glimmer slid again along the floor, took Bow’s hand and Catra’s hand at once, then put on the kind of thin smile she’d use to reassure people when she was on the throne. It didn’t work very well.

Entrapta looked back at how Glimmer tried to stand up, at how she tried to support the people around here even when she herself felt unsure. Glimmer, the mechanical genius reflected, had the same root as glamour: a beauty, a light effect, a kind of magic spell…

How could Glimmer be so clear, so emotionally available, and still be Queen? How could she be so strong and yet so sweet? Brightmoon really was nothing like the Horde. And Glimmer, with her lovely awkwardness, her physical bravery, her way of extending her aura to other people, really was nothing like Entrapta, who truly didn’t understand how other people were feeling, half the time, unless they told her. (You know more, Glimmer once told her, than you think you do about other people. Just imagine they’re Emily, Glimmer said. But Entrapta knew Emily’s source code. She had rewritten bits of Emily’s source code. Glimmer’s? Not so much.)

Reverie, that’s what it’s called, Entrapta remembered. The state of mind in which you process and re-analyze old data to produce new images, without an expected output in the near term. 

And an action programme was what the squad needed now. Something else slammed hard into Darla, pitching the whole ship forward. Yaw and roll. “Asteroids,” Entrapta said. “Not the ones She-Ra handled: not Horde’s crew. A different set, a spin off from the others, drifting right into our path.”

“Can we dodge them?” Adora wanted to know.

“Not with Darla. They’re moving faster than she can. I know, Darla. I know you're doing your best.” Entrapta stroked the console as if to console Mara's onetime ship.

“Can we survive the hits?”

“Maybe? Wait—if we—”

And Entrapta started to move both bunches in her left hair, and then her right hair, and then both hands, on the panels that controlled all Darla’s moves. The ship seemed to speed up suddenly, then slow without stopping, as if it were rowing through thick oil.

“Where are you taking us? I bet it’s neat but I want to know where.” Bow wondered, raising an eyebrow, projecting a confidence he couldn’t feel.

“The only safe place to travel right now,” Entrapta replied. “Subspace.”

Mara’s ancient ship accelerated into a blur of shifting pink and purple, flaring silvers and dazzling whites. “Relative to the asteroid field that’s pursuing us,” Entrapta began to explain with some enthusiasm, “we have increasing positive acceleration, but relative to our destination we—"

And then the light grew until she had to fold her left top hair tuft to cover her eyes, and sank to her knees along with the Best Friends Squad. Catra, meanwhile, sank to the floor on all fours as the gravity ebbed and flowed. The ship sped up, then came to a jarring stop. Catra had to use all her feline balancing skills not to be thrown further forward.

Outside Darla the black-and-white of deep space was nowhere to be seen, and the remnant asteroids were gone for good: instead, Adora—the first to look out the window—found her gaze held by blue and pink and gold and silver and lemon-yellow and soft off-white stripes, like the aurora borealis she once observed in Frosta’s domain. 

“It worked!” said Entrapta. “Thank you, Darla!” And she rubbed the exterior left joystick on the console, as if for good luck. “Oh, right. There’s a 3.5 times one over ten to the third possibility that unoccupied areas of Darla will fill up with citrus fruit as we travel through subspace, due to the sprite effect. The unusual scent, which I find quite pleasant, may be a harbinger of that subspace phenomenon!”

Catra sniffed the air inquisitively, rising to her knees. Adora sniffed too, moving closer to her onetime bedmate. “Lemons and limes?” Adora inquired.

“The sprite effect. Papers in subspace physics vol. 2, number 5. I memorized it last week! There’s an equation—”

“It’s OK, Entrapta. We don’t need the math,” Glimmer reassured her excited friend. “Is there, uh, anything else we should expect on our journey through subspace?”

“Now that you mention it, given that the sprite effect has already begun, since integral S of x exceeds the constant for positive advance consent values, there just might be—oh.”

*

Darla bucked and yawed through the still-shifting colours, first left, then right, and then very still. “This is good!” Entrapta exclaimed, swiveling her head (as if she had hinges, Glimmer thought: disturbing and super-cute at once). Entrapta then slid her goggles from her lower right pocket and placed them over her eyes. “Aha! We’ve avoided the most acidic parts of the sprite effect—can you smell how the air is sweet now? But we may be about to encounter intense Swinburne phenomena.” 

The techno-adept heroine smiled even more broadly than before, turning her gaze, behind those goggles, first to Wrong Hordak, who stood in the doorway motionless, and then Adora, who now lay on the floor, on her back, beside Catra, as close as the two could get.

“Take me now,” Adora was saying, softly, to Catra, but firmly enough that Glimmer and Bow and Entrapta could certainly hear it. “Take me and tell me what to do, I’ll do it, I’ll do anything, I’ll serve you forever, I’m yours…” And she opened her rust-red vest to pull up her white top and camisole, revealing her smooth belly, above her bellybutton, still lying on her back so that Catra could see, in a classic gesture of submission. “Take me now. I can’t help it.” She touched her waistband, half-closing her wide eyes, desperate with new joy.

Catra, now on her knees, bent over her first, best friend and began to lick her lips. Since Catra had an unusual array of sharp teeth, the sight struck Entrapta as fascinating: what was the cat-girl tasting? Were there new biomolecules involved in the Swinburne effect, or the same as ever? Were there powerful pheromones? Entrapta sniffed the air: still sweet, still citrusy, but perhaps crisper. Invigorating. Exciting.

“Possibly this is where I get off, or rather where I don’t get off,” said Bow, rising to his feet to leave the room, and finessing his way past Wrong Hordak. “I love you all but I might have to text my boyfriend.”

“The Swinburne effect at its finest!” Entrapta exclaimed. “We are definitely far into subspace.”

“What’s the Swinburne effect?” Glimmer asked, moving closer to Entrapta, holding the edges of her long tunic, and looking as if she too meant, any second, to drop to her knees.

“I’m glad you asked!” Entrapta said brightly. “Since I would probably have explained it anyway! When you put an entire ship into subspace using a subspace warp drive override, you’re putting almost all the passengers and crew into subspace too. Which has certain bioemotional implications!” And she looked around again, taking everything in. Definitely a lemon-lime scent.

Adora lay on her back, staring up, yes, adoringly at Catra, whose short hair flared and bristled, her spine arching as she bent over towards Adora. “Get your hair out of your eyes!” Catra commanded her, and Adora brushed her hair aside with her left hand. “Now let me take those leggings off. They’re filthy from running around in space. That’s not OK.”

“Take them off me,” Adora stage-whispered. “You can do anything you like to me.”

“Take them off yourself,” Catra commanded her, and Adora, without getting up from the clean, soft floor (First Ones tech rooms often came with a soft floor) compiled. Entrapta watched, from a few meters away, the blissed-out look on Adora’s submissive face as she shook off her boots and then rolled down her leggings, raising her hips to offer her whole body to a suddenly willing Catra. "Not fast enough," Catra said, and slapped Adora's butt lightly.

“Now suck your thumb,” Catra said. Adora complied, gazing up at her. “Now get that thumb out of your mouth and take off that belt,” Catra commanded her first, best friend, and Adora, still blissed out, still on her back, complied, so that she lay underneath Catra wearing only her white camisole—now pulled up just below her breasts—and panties. 

“Raise your knees. There’s a good Adora. Good girl,” Catra stage-whispered, purring as loud as Adora had ever heard her purr. As Adora raised her knees obediently, Catra shifted her weight to settle in beside and over Adora, running her lithe fingers over Adora’s closed lips.

“Bring me the last dumpling,” Catra purred, satisfying Adora’s evident wish to be told what to do. The Princess of Power half-stumbled, half-crawled, her rear end up in the air, to the platter with the final dumpling, speared the dumpling with a silver toothpick, and began to return it to her feline friend.

“No,” Catra warbled. “In your teeth. No biting.” 

Entrapta took mental notes. Had Adora ever smiled so broadly before? Obediently, her white rear slightly raised, as she stayed on her knees, Adora bent to return the dumpling to the platter, slid the toothpick free, placed the toothpick itself on the platter, and then picked up the still-hot dumpling in her own teeth, keeping her head level until she had crawled all the way back to Catra. She looked up to Catra, eyes wide open, brushing her ponytail back again, letting her camisole slide down to cover her midriff, and tilted her head back so that Catra could accept the dumpling, mouth to mouth.

“There’s a good Princess,” Catra said. “Good girl.” And she purred even louder. “Now lie down for me, just as you were.”

Adora dropped to the soft floor, laying on her back again, rolling her camisole up. “I have… I have too much free,” she mumbled happily. 

“We’ll see about that,” said Catra, preparing something from a back pocket-- a piece of paper? No, a cloth napkin. A handkerchief. Catra's tail swished and stood up straight, then more than straight, making a kind of question-mark shape over her back as she folded the handkerchief to make a soft blindfold. Catra’s ears perked all the way up, perfect triangles. An alert cat and a happy cat, for sure.

*

Enrapta, still watching, still a few meters away, clapped her hands together and made a slight squee-ing sound. “S sub cap E over p equals v times d sub e times D to the e times t squared!” she announced, to no one in particular.

“What?” Glimmer asked, looking dizzy, her back to the wall farthest from the control panels.

“Subspace effect per person equals available domme energy times velocity—that’s how fast we are moving in subspace—times the drive constant and the square of the time! I knew it had been proven mathematically but I’ve never seen it experimentally confirmed!” 

Entrapta was beside herself with joy. “Wait, Glimmer, do you like equations? I’ve learned that exclaiming equations aloud around people sometimes comes across as an invitation to check or prove the equations and that’s not always welcome, and I want to be a good friend now. Is that OK?”

“It is, and sometimes I like it,” said the young queen, still fiddling with her tunic, wobbling on her feet. “The equation means that the amount of submission varies directly with the available domme energy in the ship, not with the number of people who can dom, right?”

“That’s exactly right!” Entrapta agreed. “And the square of the time. The longer we spend—”

“So that if there’s one person with tons of domme energy, the subspace entry might be spread out among several people, as long as they’re all subject to the same velocity?”

“You’re good!” Behind them, Catra purred louder than ever, lashing Adora’s wide belt around her forearms, between elbow and wrist. The champion of Etheria wriggled her fingers, happily, helplessly, under her furred friend’s form.

“I had a good teacher,” Glimmer shrugged, and she started to lean sideways against that wall. Then she began to stutter. “I…. I…. Entrapta?”

The technopath rushed over to her recently rescued friend. “Glimmer?”

“I… I… I can’t do anything by myself any more! Help!”

“We’re deep into subspace! The math works perfectly!” Entrapta squealed, sliding one overall strap back into place with her lower left bunch of hair. “S sub cap E per unit time now exceeds max A sub s per unit time and it looks like r is less than or equal to G sub s!”

“Whu—what?” Glimmer said weakly. She was having trouble standing up: she had tugged her lilac tunic all the way off, and seemed to be pressing her back against the wall, sliding forward, tilting her head up slightly so that she could look Entrapta right in the eye, or at least eye to goggle. At the same time Glimmer began to wiggle harder, inviting Entrapta to notice, or maybe touch, her rounded hips.

Entrapta lowered the goggles. “Adora’s as far in subspace as she can go, at A sub s, and the rest of the potential energy has to become sub energy somehow, and I think it's coming into…. you.”

“Hold me… I’m your…”

Entrapta smiled. “Definitely coming soon. Research indicates that temporary loss of language can be a pleasurable side effect when slope of S sub E over t exceeds 1.5! Restrants may be indicated.” And she reached out with her top right hair to pin the Queen of Brightmoon by both arms, while stripping the fabric from a cockpit chair with both gloved hands and her laser pocketknife. 

“Darla will grow the fabric back after we get out of subspace,” Entrapta explained to no one except herself. “Its tactile properties combined with high tensile strength should make it effective here!”

The mechanically-gifted young woman took the strips of fabric and wrapped them around her friend Glimmer, first the shoulders and breasts, and then the rounded midriff, and then the hips and the upper thighs. Glimmer relaxed, held tightly, almost swaddled, opening her eyes wide.

“Oh,” Glimmer said. “Oh.” Her wrists, her elbows, the tenderest parts of her breasts, the whole midsection of her body down to her knees: all comfortably swaddled, all bound.

“You can’t do anything right now,” Entrapta said soothingly. “You don’t have to do anything. I will pay far more than adequate attention both to any apparent physical needs and associated desires, including those for erotic fulfillment, and to their emotional concomitants! Also you are lovely right there, so helpless, so vulnerable, so safe. You are a good Princess. A good little Queen. Giftwrapped.”

Glimmer cooed and squirmed and looked up at Entrapta. “You are a very submissive Queen right now. Are you so far in subspace that you don’t have words? There’s a good Glimmer. Good Glimmer.”

The Queen of Brightmoon wriggled and wiggled a little with her ankles, her smile shining, lost in Entrapta’s eyes.

*

“We lost track of time,” said Catra. Indeed they had.

“It’s a normal subspace effect. We’re all pretty far into it. Even Bow, I bet, wherever he’s gone to right now. We’re going to be fine and we’ll get to Etheria faster this way. And safer, too. Look.” The consent dial on the console had all three needles safely and firmly in green.

“Mmmmm,” Adora said, still in her blindfold. Glimmer, her voice lower, still wrapped in fabric, held loosely in Entrapta’s arms, started to sing in a kind of harmony. “Mmmmmmmm?”

“Sweet glamourous Glimmer,” Entrapta said. “Go ahead.”

“Everything’s so wet and soft and—” 

Entrapa raised one eyebrow. “X sub v is positive!” she said, to no one in particular. “Excess submissive energy may be about to redirect itself.” Then, more quietly, “this is so cool.”

“X sub v—what, what?” asked Catra impatiently, tickling Adora under her.

“It means that Glimmer has become verbal again.”

“I have,” the brave, curvy Queen of Brightmoon said woozily. “I love how you wrapped me. I got lost in there. But I think I'm about to be unwrapped. Keep holding me, holding— I—I—” 

She closed her eyes and opened them. “I don’t know how to be Queen and I shouldn’t be Queen and I’m supposed to get all my powers, the political ones and the teleportation ones and the power of friendship, together so I can grow and grow up and get everything back and be a just and legitimate sovereign—” She spit the last two words as if she were chewing celery; she closed her eyes and smiled, as if the air had changed. As if clouds had parted. “And I escaped from so much and I can’t be in charge of all these things, I can’t, I can’t control myself, I don’t want to—I don’t—hold me, love me, hold me— be with me--”

“Force equals mass ties acceleration!” Entrapta exclaimed, and cuddled Glimmer tighter in both her arms. “And you have been moving so fast. You’ve done so much. You can close your eyes and I’ll hold you and stroke you and build any gadget you want for you. You’re safe with me. I’m here for you.” And a great octagonal sparkling shield opened up and folded itself around the two of them, like an electronic canopy bed. Entrapta tucked Glimmer into it and folded her short, lithe body around Glimmer’s even shorter, submissive form.

“Do you want to sleep?” Sleep, Entrapta thought, is one form of submission.

“I want to be held and held and held,” Glimmer said, wriggling out of all but her undergarments, and placing her lips rather awkwardly right where Entrapta’s overalls began.

“I want to hold you,” Entrapta said. “Until you want to leave subspace, and again and again afterwards, if you want that.”

The young queen looked back up at the technopath with what seemed to Entrapta like the widest eyes in the world.

They snuggled closer. Entrapta stroked Glimmer’s short hair.

“Uh, guys?” Bow rushed back in. “Best Friends Squad? Anyone?” The ship had, slowly, begun to move again, not shaking so much as vibrating.

“Where’s the vibrator?” Glimmer said, happily, sleepily.

“It’s in my lab coat. Tonight?” asked Entrapta. 

The queen of Brightmoon nodded slightly, adjusting her sweet rounded chin.

“Oh, that’s not what you meant.” 

“It is what I meant, but we’re also, you know, vibrating. Like the ship is vibrating. What—”

“I’ll have to go communicate with Darla.” And Entrapta nearly somersaulted out of the shield-as-canopy-bed, came to her feet, and rushed to the joystick. “Wrong Hordak, activate! We are now leaving subspace,” she explained. “No. Wait.” Then she sank to her knees, the flared ends of her overalls spreading out.

“We’re… Oh. I think we’re about to experience the Taormino Reversal.”

“The what?”

“Discovered by Tourmaline Taor only a decade ago! Under certain circumstances, especially when S sub E exceeds A sub s, the Swinburne effect can reverse itself. Like a domino flipping. Or a switch.”

“A switch?”

“You know, a switch being pulled. I think I’m the switch. Oh.” And Entrapta nearly fell down, all four limbs and all her hair bunches on the floor, momentarily , though she was able to get up again, a bit shaky. She crawled, now, towards an alert Glimmer.

“A squared plus b squared equals a cherry pie?” Entrapta asked Glimmer. 

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Force equals math times a boop-boop. I’ve never done this. I think I like it!” Glimmer had rarely seen her friend’s eyes so wide. Entrapta looked up at Glimmer, still on her hands and knees. “Seven times nine is eighty-five?”

“I don’t think that’s right.”

“I’m a bad girl. I got it wrong.”

“No, you’re a good girl, Entrapta. A sweet good girl who just doesn’t know right now, and that’s OK. That’s your sub way. Not a literal subway, of course. You can design one of those for Brightmoon later. Right now you don’t have to do anything. That’s your way.” And Glimmer moved in close to cuddle her suddenly submissive friend.

The Queen of Brightmoon sat cross-legged on the floor while Entrapta relaxed in her lap, licking and sucking on one and then another tapering strand of hair. “Look, sparkles!” Entrapta pointed out the window. “More sparkles again! Oooh, pretty.”

Glimmer sat up straight and pushed her hair back out of her eyes and made sure she could hold Entrapta securely, placing one hand where Entrapta’s hips emerged from her waist. “You can close your eyes and just feel me hold you now. You did the thing.”

“I did the thing,” Entrapta said. “I don’t know what I did but I did the thing.” And she started to hum, softly, without a tune.

There were no words in Entrapta’s head any more, Glimmer realized, and certainly no equations. They would come back, but this must be the Taormino Reversal hard at work. Glimmer would take care of Entrapta and caress her friend and hold her friend while her friend experienced the lowest parts of subspace for herself. Glimmer had just come back from there. They were exciting, and… nice. They made sense together. Glimmer’s skin still felt…soft. Smooth. Shimmery. Now she could be shimmery and herself and strong instead.

“It’s all going to work out without you for now,” Glimmer said. “All the discoveries, all the emergencies, everything you have to solve or do or figure out. You can just…. be.” And Entrapta made soft, happy noises with her closed lips. “No speaking. No words or numbers now. Good girl.” The great mechanic and programmer popped her thumb into her mouth and made sucking noises, snuggling deeper into Glimmer's accepting shoulders.

Glimmer noticed how Entrapta’s left hand had wandered, first across Glimmer’s lap, and then into Entrapta’s own lap, between her legs. There was heat, and wetness, there, and then… Entrapta looked right at her friend, making a moue, as if asking mutely for permission. Glimmer said “You can. I’ll hold you and help you.”

Entrapta closed those astonished, wide eyes.

*

After uncountable minutes of time outside time, Entrapta and Glimmer both opened their eyes and helped each other stand. They were minutes, Entrapta realized, that she wanted to experience again. And again. With Glimmer. But not now.

The windows no longer showed the shimmering auroras of subspace: instead, white specks in a now familiar-blackness slid by. One grew brighter and closer as Darla kept on.

Catra and Adora unfolded themselves slowly, standing up together, brushing each other off. Entrapta noticed how close they were standing together, how tightly they seemed to be holding hands. “Will we go back to subspace soon?” Adora asked. Their voices made, Entrapta thought, a perfect fifth.

Glimmer rubbed her face against Entrapta's shoulder, the way a cat would, blinking. Entrapta stroked the back of Glimmer's neck with her hair.

“All we need is the drive and the energy,” Entrapta said. “If B sub d is greater than or equal to S times m there’s very little we can’t do by throwing a switch.” She paused. “Anyone else want to be the switch?”

Wrong Hordak, still motionless, scanned the five Etherians with new warmth in his green gaze.


End file.
